Paul Basu (Anthropology, University College London) will present:

The ‘In-betweenness’ of Things: Materialising Movement and Cultural Interaction in the Sierra Leonean Object Diaspora

Drawing on theories emerging from the study of human diasporas, I consider the implications for rethinking the diasporas of objects that fill the stores and galleries of the global museumscape. Using objects from the Sierra Leonean ‘object diaspora’ as examples, I examine how material culture can challenge dominant ideas about the static isomorphism between people, culture and place, and instead manifest a kind of ‘double-consciousness’ in a space ‘in-between’ peoples, cultures and places. The paper is conceived as a ‘spoken-word exhibition’ in which I discuss an assemblage of Sierra Leonean objects which ‘speak’ to the themes of inter-cultural interaction, the colonial contexts of collection and removal, and the creolisation of form.  I then go on to explore other aspects of diaspora studies in relation to the material world of collections: considering, for example, ideas of return and the value of economic or symbolic remittances.

Discussant: Anna Grasscamp (Art History, Leiden)

Directly following the seminar (15:15-16:30) there will be a meet-the-author session for MAs and PhDs, moderated by Mariana Françozo (Archaeology).

Paul Basu is a social anthropologist and museum/heritage consultant. After training and working in film and television production for several years, Paul Basu received an MSc in Social Anthropology in 1996 and a PhD in Anthropology in 2002, both at University College London, where he was a student of Barbara Bender and Christopher Tilley. He taught in the Department of Anthropology at Sussex University for a number of years before taking up a Readership in Material Culture & Museum Studies at UCL's Institute of Archaeology in 2009.

Circulated papers (please read prior to the seminar):

1. Paul Basu & Simon Coleman, 2008, ‘Introduction: Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures’, 3(3): 313-330.

2. Paul Basu, 2011, ‘Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape’, 34(1): 28-42.

Upcoming seminars:

Friday, April 13th - Dr. Renzo Duin (Archaeology, Leiden University): Title TBA

Friday, May 4th - Dr. Hester Dibbits (Museology, Reinwardt Academie): Title TBA

Friday, June 1st - Dr. Sabine Luning (FSW, Leiden University): Title TBA

Discussion with Arjen Oosterman, Vincent Schipper and Edwin Gardiner

The panel will introduce the changing idea of heritage in architecture and explore this through concrete examples. They will consider how this idea connects or disconnects with processes of migration.

Arjen Oosterman is a writer and educator as well as the editor-in-chief and publisher of Volume magazine, an independent quarterly that sets the agenda for design. By going beyond architecture’s definition of 'making buildings,' it reaches out for global views on designing environments, advocates broader attitudes to social structures, and reclaims the cultural and political significance of architecture. Created as a global idea platform to voice architecture any way, anywhere, anytime, it represents the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design.

Vincent Schipper has a BA in East Asian Studies from NYU and an M.Phil. in Art History from Leiden University where he studied the theory and history of architecture. He is currently a Social and Architectural Researcher at Smart in Public, part of the editorial team of Stichting Archis and head at Type Project. He also works as a freelance writer, editor and translator.

Edwin Gardner is an architect by training, but primarily works as a writer, web-editor, curator and design researcher working on publications, workshops, exhibitions and online publishing. He is a regular contributor to Volume magazine and collaborator of Archis. He does research on modes of diagrammatic reasoning in architecture, whether performed by brain or machine. Currently, he is a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, working on the Diagram Catalogue project, and the Tracing Concepts project in collaboration with Marcell Mars.

Dr. Alexander Geurds (Archaeology, Leiden) will present:

Tracing the fixing agent: On Americanist archaeology’s contemporary engagement with boundary, process and practice

To talk about material worlds from an archaeological perspective is an unruly challenge. More than ever before, archaeological narratives no longer foreground closed statements, steering clear from singular explanatory positions. Archaeology, at least in North American academia, is increasingly cautious. The tracing of cultural boundaries for example is avoided due to its culture historical roots. Rather than a paradox to earlier accusations of postprocessual freischweberei, Americanist archaeology now appears progressively critical in how it engages with material culture. The goal of this paper is not to “summarize” nor to “integrate” existing views on migration and object movement as studied in Americanist archaeology, instead its aim is to provide views on how these subjects are broached through invoking ethnic identity, essentially forming an archaeology of difference. Such an archaeology is relevant in our times, where differences between people, things, and ideologies persist, despite continually being debated and challenged.  

This seminar is part of the 2011-2012 series: Inscribing Practices: Material Worlds of Heritage and Migration

Dr. Marieke Bloembergen (KITLV) & Dr. Martijn Eickhoff (NIOD) will present:

Save Borobudur! The moral dynamics of heritage formation in Indonesia across orders and borders, 1930s - ca. 1990

With a focus on the eights-century Buddhist temple complex Borobudur, this paper discusses the moral dynamics of heritage politics in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia and their effect on processes of identification, inclusion and exclusion, from local, transasian and international perspectives. Borobudur, like other famous temple complexes elsewhere in Asia, developed in the colonial era from a temple ruin covered by jungle-woods, into a state-legitimizing colonial heritage site, and from there, in the postcolonial era, into national (although also contested) heritage and a world heritage site. While it can be said that Borobudur was in that sense a colonial (re)construction, this colonial legacy apparently was no hindrance for postcolonial national leaders to use the sites so as to emphasize great pre-colonial ‘national pasts’, potential for the future, and/or the international allure that the status of world heritage site brings along. Borobudur, a Buddhist site, officially acknowledged as a dead monument, became a national icon of a predominantly Islamic Indonesia.

Dr. Wayne Modest from the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam will speak on:

"O bjects In Limbo – Towards a Museology of Displacement"

The history of the modern Caribbean is one of aggressive European conquest and near extermination of the indigenous peoples of the region. This was followed by colonisation and the repopulation of the region through abusive and oppressive force over Africans who were enslaved and brought to the region for labour. Enslaved Africans were torn not only from their home, family and the cultural groups to which they belonged, but also alienated from a past to which they could no longer connect. Later, when African labour could no longer be secured through force and was no longer easily available because of emancipation, other fungible bodies – indentured Indians, Chinese and more Africans - were brought in as replacements. The Caribbean that resulted was one produced in large part by western modernity – a region populated by new groups of arrivants involved in a socio-cultural and economic environment that has been described as modern in some ways even before Europe itself .

In this presentation I will explore what I believe to be the consequences of this history for thinking about the relationship between people and things. I will suggest that the history of Caribbean formation produced a complex relationship between Caribbean peoples and objects, as Caribbean identities were negotiated. The question that will inform my discussion is: within traditional museological conceptions of time, space and history/heritage, how do we account for a group of peoples whose originary formation is not so much located in the land of their current negotiations of identity and belonging, but rather within a colonial formation characterised by forced migration, disjuncture and loss? In addressing this question, I sketch the parameters of what I call a museology of displacement.

Wayne Modest is currently head of the Curatorial Department of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He previously held positions as Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum in London and Director of the Museums of History and Ethnography at the Institute of Jamaica. He also held visiting research affiliations at Yale Centre for British Art, and New York University’s programme in Museums Studies. With a regional focus on the Caribbean, his research interests include material and visual culture; slavery; museum anthropology and the histories of collecting and exhibitionary practices. His publications include catalogue contributions, book chapters and the forthcoming book ‘The Contemporary Museum: Curators, Collections, Communities’ (Berg, co-edited with Viv Golding). Together with Paul Basu (UCL) he is the co-organiser of a series of forthcoming workshops with accompanying academic publications entitled Critical Conversations in Culture and Development. He is also working on an edited volume with Tim Barringer entitled 'Victorian Jamaica'.